Low-key weekend for us, so far. Between the Little Mr and I, we’re quite the pair of sickly things. He started a few weeks ago with an ear infection and we thought we were good until earlier this week when he started complaining about the other ear – so, back to the doctor we went. Turns out the ear he said was hurting was actually fine and might have had just a small infection but the other ear – the one that was originally a problem a few weeks ago – was a RAGING ear infection. Oy. Between that and the sinus infection I’m fighting off we’re both in quite the mood.

So with what, we’ve been relegated to taking things slow. We got an early start Saturday and actually got our garden planting done. Well, the Mr got it done. I mostly showed up to plant flowers, lol. I debated on driving up to Wooster to the Great Lakes Fiber Show and load up on pretty yarns, but I’m working on being realistic with myself right now on a. how much yarn one actually needs and b. how much yarn I can actually use given how little I get to knit anymore. So I spent a lot of the rest of the day wandering the house wondering what to do with myself, and ultimately watched movies and snuggled the munchkin.

Today, determined to do something other than sit in front of the TV being pathetic on this holiday weekend, I chopped up a pound of strawberries and poured some blackcurrant balsamic vinegar in a canning jar and we snacked away on the porch while watching the world go by (and knitting, but a worsted wool sweater on a 90 degree day was a poor choice). BTW, that blackcurrant vinegar and strawberry combo is amazing if you pair it with some bread and cheese like little appetizers!

I started reading The Bear and the Nightingale this weekend, too. It was on my “to read” list, and Amazon Kindle has it for only $2 so it seemed fated for perfect holiday weekend reading. So far I’m loving it – it’s a book that I don’t want to put down and stop reading, but at the same time I don’t want to plow through it and finish it in a single day, either. So I bounce between a chapter or two of that, and a few rows of complicated chart knitting, and then back again.

September was the month of travel and plenty. October, fittingly, becomes the month of becoming homebodies and lean times. The Mr lost his job last week, right at the end of the month. Laid off, technically, because of budget issues though it’s hard to not take it personally when you’re going through all the emotions. Things are, understandably, awkward at home, now. Our routines disrupted and our marriage and parenting flow thrown off. I have been on the verge of quitting my job from the sheer amount of stress and workload (it’s a job for two people and, alas, I’m just one person) so those plans were crushed in a moment. My job doesn’t pay all the bills, but we can survive with the help of our emergency savings (PROTIP – save your money, kids, for that rainy day. It never feels like you’ll need it and then, suddenly, life happens and you’ll be kicking yourself wishing you had. I’ve been a stressed out mess since we found out, and I’d be 1,000x worse if I had to worry about how we’d eat).

I had a random day off of work, thanks to a broken sewer issue and no bathrooms, so I spent some quality time on plans to get back to the way we used to live when we were young and poor. I have no desire to go back to boxed mac and cheese and processed junk, so the challenge now is finding healthy meals that are also cheap to make. And working on our food waste habit that we’ve developed over the last few years – not eating leftovers like we should, not chopping and freezing veggies before they go to waste that can get thrown into soup, etc. It sounds dreadful of me, but after having a kid and then having to not worry about money so much I became lazier about things. And no eating out anymore, either. At least not until we get things figured out on what income, exactly, we’re going to have. That’s going to be the hardest for the Little Mr, who has gotten spoiled with treats this summer in the form of freezes from Taco Bell (Nana is to blame on that one)

So far, we’ve been crazy productive in just a weekend. Since we’re avoiding spending money, we built an old office desk we had before we closed the business office down a few years ago, and that’s now in my craft room along with my computer. And we put up some shelving in the craft room, too – I have this bad habit of having all my craft stuff all over the house because I’ve never had enough storage, so we re-arranged some things in the rest of the house and now I’ve got this wonderful little Ikea Fjallbo unit in the room for storage. I decorated it with things I already had in the craft room, and the little lamp was rescued from my mom’s Goodwill pile.

The biggest stress, right now, is that the holidays aren’t far off. My holiday baking used to have its own budget line item each year, so that will have to be scaled back. I may need to start finding handknits to make (quickly) for holiday gifts, too. It’s far too late to come up with anything big to make for anyone, and there’s always the worry that someone will turn their nose up at a handmade item and not realize that it’s actually more valuable than whatever made-in-a-3rd-world-country piece of plastic would have otherwise been purchased and probably broken in less than a year. I worry too much, I’m sure. Between all the yarn and fabric I have, there has to be SOMETHING I can come up with for at least a few people, though. Even if it’s a few pretty lace hats for the girls in the family.

I’m not getting enough progress done today to things I wanted to get done. My first vacation day since I switched jobs (I hit my 1 year anniversary on Monday, but wasn’t able to find time for a day off until today), and I spent the first half of my day cleaning and cleaning and cleaning before a contractor came over to look at a few things on the house. I might, just might be getting our icky bathroom redone… and a half bathroom put in on the 1st floor… and while here the contractor mentioned the possibility of an upstairs laundry, which would mean no longer needing to go all the way to the basement to do laundry. I’m so flipping excited I can hardly stand myself! I am sure, of course, that all of that is going to cost us a ridiculous amount of money and I’m absolutely certain that during all the construction I’ll wonder whether it’s worth it. But. BUT. We’ve been here 9 years and I’ve been cleaning a bathroom that we half-assed fixed up just enough to make it liveable until we got the money to redo it. It’s time. Past time, really.

Anyway, so this second half of my day has been centered on me time. Knitting a bit, spinning a bit, snacking on whatever I feel like (mostly Easter candy) and binge watching Girlboss on Netflix. Sure, I could be watching something more… refined. But after the last few weeks I’ve had, complete with screwing up BIG at work, something easy to consume that speaks to my rebellious/take-no-shit side was much needed. So this is the state of things right now – some fiber on the wheel, and a sweater in the works. I knit for a few hours here, and spun for a few hours there. Nothing particularly hard or exciting, but the perfect comfort projects for a much needed day off with no one home.

And, no, that little sweater isn’t for the Little Mr, nor am I pregnant – it’s for the now 4 month old grandkid that I still haven’t knit for. I feel terrible that I haven’t managed to make anything for him, but every time I’ve tried either the pattern is too much to follow with a toddler to care for or the yarn doesn’t work out for it. Or, in the case of the quilt I had started a while back… I sewed the whole thing together wrong and it was far too much work to sit and rip out all the thread and re-sew.

Easter is always pretty relaxed now as an adult. No church to rush off to, monster egg hunts, or driving out of town to see family. Easter, for me, is never religious. It is more about celebrating spring – the return of the birds and flowers. So this morning I sat on the patio in my PJs and knit while listening to the birds.

Later, we took a little walk around the neighborhood and looked at all the flowers and trees, just the two of us. The perfect little way to celebrate the day, if there ever was one.

I’m trapped, still, in this desire to want to knit everything for everyone… and having no time. So I’ve spent a lot of time bouncing between projects and not really finishing anything. I really should focus on finishing something, but the precious little knitting time I do get is just more enjoyable when I get to spend it knitting something that excites me at that given moment. Which means I’ve got a sock project or two lingering, some pussy hats I was asked to make (but told “no rush” which has guaranteed me to work on them when I need something mindless), this cardigan in progress, and I cast on a baby sweater for the latest addition to the family. And I’m still tempted to cast on for something like a lace shawl, even though I know that would be a total disaster trying to a. keep my pattern pages from getting thrown around the house by the kid and b. having enough focus in the first place to even read a complicated chart of lace.

I have 11 work days until my vacation time kicks in. 11 work days until I can take a much needed break when I need it to spend my day at home – alone – to knit and craft and focus on some essential self care. I think my very first day I take might just be spent watching Poldark and spinning on my wheel, which is much harder to spend time doing than knitting that can be picked up at any given moment for a row here and there. I have some gorgeous fiber I picked up from CreatedByElsieB that is calling my name (though, as usual, I have zero idea what I’ll make with the finished product – assuming I ever get around to knitting it in the first place).

Knitting notes: Pattern is “Elaine’s Blouse” but I’ve modified it to not include the weird ribbing around the waist – I liked it at first but the more I looked at it the more weird it seemed. Yarn is some Queensland Kathmandu I purchased a few years ago after a lovely knitting friend, Julie, passed away and the knitting group sold a lot of her very large stash to put money toward her kids’ college funds. I’m not 100% positive that I have enough yarn, but my hopes are at the very least I can get away with 3/4 sleeves to make it all work.

Welcome

Pardon the garden. A phrase I’m most likely to utter anytime anyone visits the house during the growing seasons of spring through fall. Sure, there are pretty flowers and delicious veggies in there somewhere, but they might be a little hard to find amidst the mess of overgrown grass, dandelions, and weeds that have found their way in there and haven’t been pulled. Read On